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Girl Made of Stars

Submitted by jenna on Sun, 12/03/2017 - 6:17pm

I forgot I'd read another of Blake's books, How to Make a Wish, which I liked for its including but not centering sexuality and race. In Girl Made of Stars, Mara, the protagonist's bisexuality is more prominent than Grace's in HtMaW, but it's still less important than themes of what happens when someone you love does a bad thing and how girls support one another.

I'm going to gripe a second here while I wait for GMoS to launch in my ebook reader. I've been having trouble with the Bluefire Reader lately. It freezes at the end of each chapter, and I have to wait a minute before I can turn the page, which is super annoying. My time is valuable, people!

Remember when I read Moxie, and I couldn't believe high school administrators measured girls skirts? Well, that happens in Tennessee, too, apparently.

I'll get hauled in to the office, probably more than once, and despite Principal Carr's inability to find any infringement according to his handy-dandy measuring tape, he will demand I change. I'm a distraction, he'll say. Boys will be boys, he'll say.

So glad girls and women are here to help boys and men control their urges. That works really well.

There are some sweet, poetic moments, like when Mara observes "the eerie peace" of graveyards and muses on "All the lives already lived, done toiling, hopefully resting." All our mess will be over and meaningless one day.

The story is told in the first person, but there's a powerful moment after a painful thing is revealed when Mara's voice switches to third, "The girl feels..."

Later she's sharing an awful story with another girl who has survived something awful. They describe the "depressing beauty" of their surroundings, which beautifully evokes what is going on between them.